The Value of Stating the Obvious
In my last corporate job, I stumbled across an interesting point: There is value in stating the obvious.
I’ve had several experiences that taught me this point. One good example is the time my company was assembling a customer summit. We had channel partners who wanted to attend (for those unfamiliar, those are essentially resellers) and we were nervous about getting enough customers to sign up. It was critical for the defined success of the summit that it was customer-heavy and -focused.
What’s the obvious answer here?
Obviously, it seemed to me, the partner who has the most customers in attendance gets to go. It incents the partners to encourage their customers to sign up and gives them a stake in the success of the event. It seemed so obvious to me that I didn’t bother even speaking it aloud. I assumed that someone else was already working on that angle.
It wasn’t until thirty minutes into the conversation, when we were still brainstorming ideas for signing up customers, that I verbalized what I thought was obvious.
